LEXSY Background Information

Leishmania tarentolae, a unicellular, flagellated protozoan organism, belongs to a family of parasites shuttling between sandflies and vertebrates. Since isolation from its host Tarentola mauretanica in 1921, L. tarentolae is kept in axenic culture, and it is not pathogenic to mammalians. The LEXSY expression strains are therefore grown under S1 laboratory safety conditions.

LEXSY Biosafety Status PDF

LEXSY strains can be handled like E. coli: they may be grown on agar plates or in liquid media from 96-well plate up to fermenter format. They have doubling times as short as 4 hours under optimum aeration and grow to high density within short time.

Why did we develop LEXSY and how does it compare to other available expression systems? What are LEXSY's main advantages?

LEXSY Essence PDF



The LEXSY host vector systems allow the constitutive or inducible, cytoplasmic or secretory expression of target proteins:

• Constitutive cytoplasmic or secretory expression:
  The target protein is constitutively expressed in the cytoplasm and isolated from LEXSY cells, or constitutively secreted into the growth medium and efficiently purified by affinity chromatography.
• Inducible cytoplasmic or secretory expression:
  The target protein expression is under control of the T7-TR architecture of the engineered LEXSY host T7-TR. It is induced by addition of tetracycline to the medium.

Leishmania drawing from: http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/diseases/leishmania.htm
Gecko image from: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~gambl007/geckopics4.htm

Illustrations of LEXSY Applications

View Illustrations for inducible expression, secretory expression and LEXSY glycosylation here:

Inducible LEXSY PDF

Secretory LEXSY PDF

LEXSY Glycosylation PDF

LEXSY Methods, Literature and FAQs

A collection of methods for handling LEXSY strains (transfection, strain conservation, plating on agar) is found here:
LEXSY Methods

Find more comprehensive, downloadable information on LEXSY and FAQs:
LEXSY Literature and FAQs